Are there more bad players now in WoW?

There has been a lot of internet noise recently about how many bad players there are in WoW now. And after my Scarlet Monastary Cathedral run last night, there could be a lot of truth to this. Last night was a run so bad that I stayed just to see if it could get any worse. We had a paladin tank and a paladinhealer that could not agree on which buffs to use. The healer spent most of the instance hysterically writing “BoK Please!!!!!” in chat.

The tank was super bad. Our first tank dropped after 2 or 3 mobs, so we had to wait a little while for the new tank to turn up. When he did he greeted us all with the words, “I hope you like big pulls cause I pull a lot of mobs”, at which point he ran out into the corridors surrounding the little fountain, pulled every mob in sight and we wiped. A quick run back and he did it again. Once again we wiped but for a different reason.

Lesson number 1 on lots of mobs tanking – ‘Be able to hold the threat on 10 mobs when there is a mage in the party.’

I mean, what am I supposed to do? Hurl fireball at one of the mobs? No way. I gave him a good 8 seconds or so to get threat and then I let rip with the AoE effects. Que 6 or 7 mobs heading right my way. What would any mage do in this situation? Shit your pants and ice-block. It’s a funny feeling in ice-block to sit around watching the rest of the party quickly die and then having the mobs surround you with expectant looks on their faces for your icy prism protection to wear off.

The next run the priest died. We stood around waiting for the paladin tank to heal her until he admitted that he never got that spell. But what was the point, he was a tank, right? The healer died due to the fact that the tank kept standing in the cathedral doors which kept opening and closing cutting off casters line of sight. We couldn’t get him to move. He thought he was being brilliant by running in and pulling mobs back to the door. No, not brilliant, just a bucket-load of fail bunnies. By this stage the group consisted of myself, the healer, the tank and by the end we cycled through about 8 or 9 other dps members as people joined and then quit in despair. It was quite a run.

Are there more bad players in WoW now than some time before? I don’t think so. The difference is that due to the new improved LFG system we now have daily contact with them. I don’t mind it. I’m quite happy to be leveing a class that is entirely new to me but being able to have the leeway to experiment and get my head around its particulars. Really good groups would probably just make me nervous. And the epic failness makes me really appreciate the good players that I know. I don’t think that this game is that easy. As in everything in life, it takes some effort to be good.